Livio Castiglioni, the eldest of the three Castiglioni brothers, took his diploma in architecture at Milan Polytechnic in 1936. In 1938 Livio Castiglioni and his younger brother Pier Giacomo opened a practice on the Piazza Castello in Milan, which the youngest Castiglioni brother, Achille, would join in 1944. Architecture commissions were very rare at the time so the Castiglionis concentrated primarily on designing utilitarian objects for daily use, including both furniture and appliances. In 1939 Livio and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni designed "Phonola", a radio that represented a first because it was encased in Bakelite rather than wood. In 1952 Livio Castiglioni left the joint practice. From 1940 until 1960 Livio Castiglioni was a design consultant for Phonola, from 1960-1964 for Brionvega. All three Castiglionis were very active in the Italian design scene and, in 1956, they were among the founders of the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale (ADI: the Italian Industrial Design Association), which awards the coveted and important Compasso d'Oro. In 1959/60 Livio Castiglioni was president of ADI. Livio Castiglioni's best known designer object is the "Boalum" lamp, which he and Gianfranco Frattini designed for Artemide in 1971. The lamp consists of a flexible piece of white plastic tubing, two meters long, in which several lamps are set in a row. The tubing can be bent and twisted as desired and up to four such lamps can be linked together to an overall length of 8 meters.